Susan Sontag References
You have all been given these references as hard copy.
For your self-study please follow all three, they will help you to get a better picture of who Sontag was and what she stood for. The websites will help you frame her work and hopefully will promote further thought.
Task
Visit the sites and consider their content
Either by posting an extract from a site or by summarising your findings, indicate something that you found interesting.
Make a personal comment about your findings. Try to make a comment about how these websites may make you view her work.
Always be mindful of bias. Comment on the reliability of your source.
"I envy paranoids; they actually feel people are paying attention to them."
ReplyDeleteI found this quote interesting because Susan Sontag suggest that only people who are paranoids will only truly know how somebody else may feel suggesting that it is almost impossible for any average person to truly understand another human beings emotions/feeling.
I found that looking over each website gave me an insight to different parts of Susan Sotangs life, the good times and the bad. Although it seems that the Gaurdian's article seemed to be quite biased and only truly seemed to focus on the more positive comments like "Sontag took a master's degree in philosophy at Harvard", but i think the overall reliability of this information is quite good because one is from her own actual site, one is a newspaper that wouldn't print lies due to in reputation and ones is a quotation website which is possibly the least reliable because some of the quotes may not have come from her written work.
Returning to America in 1958, and met by Rieff at the airport, she told him before they got into the car that she wanted a divorce. Reclaiming her son, who had been living with Rieff's parents, she declined Rieff's offers of child support or alimony, moved into a small apartment, took an editorial job on Commentary, and wrote furiously
ReplyDeletei picked this quote because coupled with the following;
Her studies of languages of illness, Illness As Metaphor, (1978) and AIDS And Its Metaphors (1989) were writ ten under the shadow of her diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer, for which she sought experimental therapy in Paris. In 1998 she was diagnosed with a rare form of uterine cancer, from which she has died. In her studies of language and illness, she sought to remove the second punishment, of blame, that the metaphors of illness sustain.
it makes me understand Sontag’s intentions and reasoning behind her ideologies, i now understand the reason she wrote her essays; she seems to channel the pain, and frustration and angst into her work, i really admire this because she found a positive, useful outlet for her negative emotions. Rather than sitting back and feeling sorry for herself or wallowing in self pity, she picked up her pen and wrote to encourage those in situations similar to hers.
I think the website is very reliable because it is presents facts such as key aspects on her life, rather than specutlative opinions. I would say it COULD be slightly biased, because when people die, we tend to say a lot of positive things about them rather than the positive AND the negative.
"Her books, all published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux," i found this interesting that she has a few people publishing her book you would think al sort of people would want the rights to.
ReplyDeletethese websites put her work in to perspective for us, many hours of her life have been devoted to these books and her techniques of writing them.
the reliability is their these books have been made and you can find them in shop's so this side its rather authentic, and the data people have got together for the site its self could have been confirmed by susan her self if the site was made before December 28 2004 when she died and if not the data could have been referenced with other site of the time to see if it was the same.
'AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them.'
ReplyDeleteI found this interesting because I think that Susan Sontag is saying that we only think of AIDS badly because of what we have grew up hearing and learning.
''It is not suffering as such that is most deeply feared but suffering that degrades.''
ReplyDeleteI chose this quote of Sontag who was also referred to as the'Dark lady' of American intellectual life because it was sort of linked to our discussion in class about her work on''Regarding the pain of others''.This quote to some extent covers how we regard pain,as we stated in class that everyone agrees that pain and suffering is bad and everyone sees war as horrendous but nothing is done about it so has over the years the fear of 'suffering that degrades' lost its relevance.People see it as barbaric but yet nothing is being done about it.Its almost like its lost its potency,we no longer have fear for it but are rather used to it.We hear of cities that have been torn apart by war and sufferings yet we sigh for a moment and then carry on with our lives as if nothing happened.
The source of this quote is very reliable since it is a website specifically dedicated to preserving brainy quotes of great thinkers and philosophers of our generation.
"Susan Sontag, the "Dark Lady" of American intellectual life for over four decades,died of cancer. She was 71...It was a gay sensibility that she interpreted, and that shaped her response to the visual arts. It was also the central focus of her emotional life...She had a deeply solitary and precocious childhood... There was little encouragement to the life of the mind"
ReplyDeleteThese are the findings i found interesting from the websites we were provided with. To believe Sontag came from a background of such and moved so many with her essays,books,knowledge * intellect is inspiring alone!
My source was semi reliable as it was in the Guardian paper and on the website an is titles obituary,however these quotes could be biased as the writer could of been a fan in Sontag his/her self.
'Ambition, if it feeds at all, does so on the ambition of others.
ReplyDeleteSusan Sontag' i got this quote from the site 'brainy quotes'.
eventhough the the quote is small it means alot. it is saying that if you have an ambition you only have it because other people want it or they might be trying to stop you. i also like this quote as i am involved with sports and it means the same thing in sports terms as if you have a goal to do something or someone you have to beat a person or thing which is trying to stop you.
the site is quite reliable as i have used it before to find some quotes. the bad thing is that i dont know if somebody has made them up or not.
"For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied".
ReplyDeleteI choose this quote because Susan Sontag wanted to show that many people had different ways to define death. Other religions showed it as something that was natural and people should expect it while some took it as being caused by a person committing sin to God.Death cannot be controlled, was to show that no living human being was able to say stop to death but once a person has been diagnosed with a disease they can take a treatment, that is the only way to deny it.
A human rights activist for more than two decades, Ms. Sontag served from 1987 to 1989 as president of the American Center of PEN, the international writers’ organization dedicated to freedom of expression and the advancement of literature, from which platform she led a number of campaigns on behalf of persecuted and imprisoned writers.
ReplyDeleteSusan Sontag believed in many things and by this information above she spoke up and campaigned for what she thought was right and what she thought was wrong. She was also a very knowledgeable woman.
sensibility, she was fundamentally an aesthete. She offered a reorientation of American cultural horizons. On Style, the title essay in her first collection, plus Notes On Camp, set out an economy of culture which was moral without being moralistic, and began a radical displacement of heterosexuality.
ReplyDeleteI found that susan sontag, set most of her work on the economy and culture of people lives, and she spoke about what she believed in and what other people were to scared to talk about.
"the white race is the cancer of human history".
ReplyDeleteI chose this quote because I think it is such an extreme thing to say, but it makes you think about how unfairly thw white race has untreated the black race, but in another mind set, the white race couldnt be labeled as something so extreme, because we are all equals, and one specific race cant be blamed for the world's corruption and problems
I thought the source was quite reliable, because it included some finer details into Susan Sontag's life
"I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams."
ReplyDeleteI find this quote challenging in that it compels me to think about my life. Everybody aims to be successful in life and we all have dreams that we wish to achieve; however if we don't live our lives towards these dreams then they are nothing but fantasies.
After visitng these website, I began to appreciate Sontag as an individual and a writer. I read her autobiography which informed me about her life and how she got diagnosed with cancer then wrote "Illness As Metaphor, (1978) and AIDS And Its Metaphors (1989)" this increased my respect for her.
The website to me sounds biased because they all state all of Sontag achievements and successes. For example, the obituary portrays her as this perfect vibrant writer/woman; However I find it hard to believe that she lived her whole life perfectly because no one is above mistakes.
'Lying is the most simple form of self-defence'
ReplyDeleteI chose this quote as it really speaks for itself. It is a completely true thing to say as most people today will lie to family and friends just to protect themselves from being found out.
I also think that people lie to protect the feelings of others not just to protect themselves.
"The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is."
ReplyDeleteI find this quote of susan sontag interesting because is trying to let the world know that truth is a way of letting people into ur personal life because if u are sick and people dont know, by tellin them the truth they wiil get to know and also to help you in anyway they can,and also if you cant say the truth then you write it to someone about what is going on in ur life,and if you dont tell the truth about ur life,there is no way you wil get help from anybody.there is a proverb that say a problem shared is a promblem solved.
I think this quote is reliable because it refers to the whole logic of life,because if u dont tell the truth about some think,there is no way people wil know.
"For those who live neither with religious consolations about death nor with a sense of death (or of anything else) as natural, death is the obscene mystery, the ultimate affront, the thing that cannot be controlled. It can only be denied."
ReplyDeleteI find this quote by Susan very interesting and thoughtful. What she is trying to say here, is that regardless of our beliefs, whether they be religious, scientific or otherwise, we are all scared of 'death' and what it means for us. We don't know what it feels like, what it means for us or what (if anything) happens after it. Generally, our main goal is to live as long as possible. We strive to defy death and live life to the fullest enjoyment however we see fit. This is basic human instinct, but it is also the fear of what will become of us after death, because there is no way of knowing for sure...
I think the website is fairly reliable, it simply states Susan Sontag's quotes, and leaves us the think them over ourselves.
"The further she explored, the stronger became her doubts about whether photographs gave what they seemed to be delivering: a slice of truth, a piece of reality."
ReplyDeleteI found this quote to be a huge wake-up call to me because i always look at a photo and receive the obvious truth/reality but now I will judge the photos as Susan Sontag has once before doubted the so-called 'Slice of truth' in each photo. Not everyone will feel the same as Susan has but i hope that after they have read this quote they ,too, will react the same way as i have and continue to question each and every photo that they come across whether if this photo actually portrays the reality or truth of that image.
I believe that this website is very reliable because it is what was said from Susan's son.
'The only interesting answers are those that destroy the questions'
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting quote as it is true in all it says, a true interesting answer is one that stops the person that asks the question in their tracks and one that destroys the meaning of the question.
"The truth is always something that is told, not something that is known. If there were no speaking or writing, there would be no truth about anything. There would only be what is."
ReplyDeleteThis quotation shows that it is people that make things the truth and be real, without talk and people believing things there would be no truth in anything we do. Who knows, maybe there is no truth in anything we do?
"Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs"
ReplyDeleteI like this quote as it is true, the more you travel the more memories/photographs you will take away will you.
I liked the 'quotes website' as it has a wide range of encouraging quotes which could be learnt from. I think, by looking at these quotes, she is a woman you can learnt a lot from. I am not sure if she is bais, but I do know she mainly tells the lighter side to things.
"Lying is the most simple form of self-defence."
ReplyDeleteSusan Sontag
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/susan_sontag_2.html
I found this quote very intriguing and fascinating because it aroused my curiosity on lying because we all do it but I never thought out the box that it might be some sort of self defensive we use as humans to get out of situations!
I assume the website I got the quote from is somewhat reliable, and it clearly shows Susan Sontag's quotes,
which can leave us thinking about them after we have read them to try and make sense of her quotes ourselves which was probably her why she has made them so hard to understand and put into today's terms.